iOakland Museum of California (OMCA)Downtown Oakland
Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory
This exhibition has ended.
The first major museum survey of Bay Area artist Mildred Howard: five decades of collage, sculpture and installation exploring memory and African American identity.
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Near the end, you step into a small house lined with red glass and everything around you turns red. Next to it, blown-glass apples float in a pool and throw a wobbling reflection onto the wall above. That's Blackbird in a Red Sky, and the show doesn't begin anywhere near this loud.
It runs in order through 50 years, starting in a brightly lit corridor of small assemblages and works on paper, with Bill Evans' "Peace Piece" on the speakers. The earliest work is a collaged self-portrait on a $100 bill from 1975. The middle is a bright red room of photographs and studio material, and the last space is dark and holds the big installations.
KQED's Sarah Hotchkiss said it gives "a Bay Area artistic legend her much-deserved flowers." Her one complaint: the videos are reachable only by QR code in the gallery and aren't online, so it's your phone or nothing. It's in the Great Hall and closes on 18 October.
Editor's pick
The first major museum survey of Bay Area artist Mildred Howard: five decades of collage, sculpture and installation on memory and African American identity.
Look for
Blackbird in a Red Sky
Walk through a framework house lined with red glass, beside a pool of floating blown-glass apples that cast liquid reflections on the wall.
Crossings (1997)
Ceramic eggs on a cobalt-blue plinth with a gilded mirror, lit red, a work about the Middle Passage.
The shrouded statues
Monument-sized figures of William Gwin, Peter Burnett and Francis Scott Key, all three enslavers, wrapped in red cloth.
Moving Stills
8mm film Howard shot at 14, rediscovered recently and projected as a triptych through layers of lace.
The $100 bill self-portrait
Look for the earliest piece in the show: Howard's 1975 self-portrait collaged onto a hundred-dollar bill.
Good for
- Going Solo
- Nerding Out
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Image credits
4
- Oakland Museum of California (OMCA)mk30 from USA, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Rex RayCourtesy of Minnesota Street Project
- 20 Years - Anniversary ExhibitionCourtesy of Minnesota Street Project
- African American Museum and Library at Oakland (AAMLO)Oakland Public Library / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0